AR8328/AR8328N Product Overview
The AR8328 is the latest in high performance small network switching. It is ultra low power, has extensive routing and data management functions and includes hardware NAT functionality (AR8328N).
The AR8328/AR8328N is a highly integrated seven-port Gigabit Ethernet switch with a fully non-blocking switch fabric, a high-performance lookup unit supporting 2048 MAC addresses, and a four-traffic class Quality of Service (QoS) engine. The AR8328 has the flexibility to support various networking applications. The AR8328/AR8328N is designed for costsensitive switch applications in wireless AP routers, home gateways, and xDSL/cable modem platforms.
The AR8328/AR8328N complies with 10Base-T, 100Base-T and 1000Base-T specifications, including the MAC control, pause frame, and auto-negotiation, providing compatibility with all industry-standard Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet networks. The AR8328/AR8328N device contains five full-duplex 10/100/100Base-T transceivers and 10/100BaseT that can run at half duplex, each of which performs all of the physical layer interface functions for 10Base-T Ethernet on Category 3, 4, or 5 unshielded twisted-pair (UTP) cable and 100Base-T Fast/Gigabit Ethernet on Category 5 UTP cable. The remaining 2 ports feature a standard GMII/RGMII/MII/Serdes interface to allow connection to a host CPU in PON/xDSL/Cable/Wi-Fi/Fiber routers.
The MACs on the AR8328/AR8328N support Jumbo Frames to reduce overhead on the link for more efficiency. SPI or EEPROM interfaces provide easy programming of the on-chip 802.1p QoS and/or DiffServ/TOS allowing switch traffic to be given different classes of priority or service – for example, voice traffic for IP phone applications, video traffic for multimedia applications, or data traffic. Up to 4k virtual LANs (VLANs) can be set up via the SPI port for separation of different users or groups on the network. ACL features can reduce CPU effort for VLAN/QOS/DSCP/forward mapping and remapping based on Layer1 to Layer4 information. 16 PPPoE header add/removal can increase video quality and offload the CPU. Hardware IGMP V1/V2/V3 is an innovation for IPTV service. Qualcomm low-power can increase energy efficiency for no link or idle states.
The AR8328N supports line rate NAT (Network Address Translation) offloading the processor and improving throughput.